The nickname was coined by Mike Royko, the famed Chicago columnist, who in 1976 said that [Jerry] Brown appeared to be attracting “the moonbeam vote,” which in Chicago political parlance meant young, idealistic and nontraditional.

The term had a nice California feel, and Mr. Royko eventually began applying it when he wrote about the Golden State’s young, idealistic and nontraditional chief executive. He found endless amusement — and sometimes outright agita — in California’s oddities, calling the state “the world’s largest outdoor mental asylum.”

“If it babbles and its eyeballs are glazed,” he noted in April 1979, “it probably comes from California.”...

Since that little gambit didn't work out too well the Soviets/Russians will have to satisfy themselves with Hillary's handing over our Uranium assets to the Russians for a nice little payoff to the Clinton foundation.

Ah Moonbeam. My governor now---and way back in the way back as well. He is the guy who took the young, very attractive, and very sensual Linda Ronstadt on a safari to Africa. And had no flippin idea what to do with her. At the time Linda had a reputation for loving and leaving--but Ol Moonbeam didn't even complete the first part of the equation.

It's a very pleasant, if meaningless, song that comes across very pleasantly. For those inclined to vote Democrat, it works.

The mic hand-offs made it a little uneven. The sudden appearance of the Big Silly Guy from That Show in the 90s was a tad jarring. Folks seemed to cheer for their favorite, recognizable performer. Not just Cagney and Lacey but some I didn't recognize.

The appeal is limited by the fact 100% of the Anti-Love ugliness outside the convention and across the U.S. is left-wing agitation.

See David Goldmans article linked from Instapundit. Regarding cartelization and collapse in new business formation, along with the concentration of growth in the Fortune 1000. No wonder Broadway likes these people, they know who can afford theater tickets.

Trotting out this pleasant but tired Bacharach-David tune looked like an appeal for the sclerotic old leftie vote, which, as has already been mentioned, should be pretty well locked up. (Maybe it would have felt less stodgy if Demi Lovato's dancers came out of the wings and started frugging wildly in the background.) And since very few of these worthy Broadway stars -- except maybe for Tyne Daly, Richard Kind and a few others -- are well known to the general public, someone should've IDed them as the camera went from one to the next. Of course, I was hoping that Paul Simon would be given a second chance with a medley of songs from his Broadway flopperoonie "The Capeman."

Regarding the intro to the song: "The brightest voices of Broadway" was clearly a hasty edit.

"Let's say 'Brightest stars of Broadway.'" "No, we can't say that. People don't know a lot of them.""Well, they're among the best singers, anyway." "Does, 'Brightest voices of Broadway' work?""No, a voice isn't bright. But we need to get the text to the intro lady."

The Dems are so much better at stagecraft than statecraft. An act like this is effective with Broadway stars, but don't try this with rap stars. You couldn't possibly gather that many rap stars in the same place at the same time without gun violence breaking out.

Oh, what I wouldn't give to have Mike Royko around to observe and report on this election cycle. Talk about your mental asylums.

Well, that was just...sad. I have long considered Broadway home to some of the most talented performers around. Too bad they couldn't find some of them to do this tribute to Hillary love (I sincerely hope Richard Kind and Rosie Perez aren't appearing in musicals). Did you notice how some of them fairly grabbed the mic away? The audience certainly was grooving on it, though. The only thing they were missing were Bics to flick.

I'd like to build the world a home and furnish it with love, with honey bees and apple trees and snow white turtle doves. I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony; I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company. It's the real thing. Coke is.

Like rhhardin, I am somewhat confused at the crowd's excitement. There were a handful of singers that I could recognize, though honestly I did not know any of their names, and the ones that got the biggest response are mostly mysteries. Either the Democratic Party is full of serious Broadway fans, or the microphones being used to capture the crowd reaction were being very particular in who it recorded. It half felt like a laugh track. The few times they showed the crowd, they did not seem nearly as enthusiastic.

The microphone passing stunt was a neat idea and very appropriate for the song, but it was executed so-so. It has the feel that they came up with it 5 minutes before they went on stage, or it was planned but never practiced.

The message is, of course, true. The world does need more love. However, in the meantime you also need to protect yourself from those with a lot of hate and singing songs tends to be ineffective in that regard. Sadly, if my intuition is correct, the crowd up there thinks highly of certain very hateful groups that would gladly kill the lot of them, and think very lowly of groups that have a lot of love but disagree with their political views. The Democratic Party has more or less defined "love" as "things we like" without any objective standards whatsoever.

Overall, they seem more like the Independence Day party crowd on the top of the skyscraper celebrating the alien arrival just before the aliens blow up the city.

So the first one to sing is Idina Menzel, or the voice of Elsa in FROZEN. She is a very big deal on Broadway. So is the Black woman, I don't know her name, but I recognize her. The other big cheer before Cagny and Lacey was for Kristen Bell, who was also a voice in FROZEN. I'M guessing the small Latino man is in HAMILTON, which is the biggest deal right now for our Coastal Media Elite.

There has not been a novel argument made by the anti-rights bigots of the anti-gun crowd since at least back in 2008, when the Heller case was in the news.

Not. One. Single. New. Idea.

And their old ideas have been so thoroughly debunked that the only reason they can trot these dead horses out for our attention is that most people don't pay any attention to the anti-gun crowd except once every few years.

The Dem anti-gun platform is of a piece with the rest of their repudiation of inherent individual rights of citizens in favor of privilege, based on their elite selection of the privileged groups.

mockturtle: When I'm in California I am struck by the fact that Californians really don't know how flaky they are. It's hard for me to imagine that many of these same people elected Reagan for governor.

Outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco. California is an extreme example of the real issue, which is leftist urbanites vs. center-right small-l libertarian and outright conservative suburban and rural voters. If you want the California take on conservatism, look no further than Victor Davis Hanson.

For the truth on Gov. Moonbeam 2.0, see this article on California's "high speed rail" project.

Remember when they're kicking in your door (to confiscate your firearms) or suing your ass off (for failing to adhere to whatever social policy they've decided is most important today) or getting you fired (for donating to the wrong cause/group) or burning down your city in a riot for "justice"...they're doing it with love.

The Left is all about love. To oppose the Left is to embrace Hate.Also: Freedom is Slavery.

When I was a kid this song was on the radio all the time, only it was the version intercut with "Has Anybody Here" that includes news audio of the assassinations of Bobby, Martin and John. It was chilling and tragic. I cannot hear the insipid melody of this song without also hearing, "President Kennedy has been shot."

The Democrats just blasted an evil dog whistle to every baby boomer who thinks Trump is a Hitler who needs to be taken out.

Oh, what I wouldn't give to have Mike Royko around to observe and report on this election cycle. Talk about your mental asylums.

Right. Royko seemed like a traditional Democrat--what would he think of the current Democrat party in general, and Obama in particular? (Studs Terkel would probably be fine with both.) Given Trump vs. Hillary, he would be at no loss for words for either of them.

At least guns are multi-purpose, including self-defense, and the loss of life attributed to guns is around 10,000 annually.

Abortion, on the other hand, is single-purpose, to dispose of unwanted and inconvenient lives and recycle their lucrative parts, and the loss of wholly innocent life attributed to its normalization and commercialization is around 1,000,000 annually, in America alone.

Actually, we need a lot more Moonbeams. For the record "Governor Moonbeam" returned and is governor of California as I type, and is largely credited for righting the state's budget and improving the economy after it crashed in the early 2000's due to manipulation of energy prices which the G W Bush administration declined to stop until it was too late. That led to a recall election which Darryl Issa, who drove the recall campaign, was hoping would get him into the governor's mansion but instead "the Arnold" won and through changes to the tax code he made the state's budget even more of a mess. I remember visiting my mom in San Ramon during that time, a highly affluent area, and going to the public library where people were wearing their coats and holding fleece blankets around themselves as they browsed books because the heat was turned down so low. The fact that you would dismissively mock someone who has done so much good for his state reflects poorly on you, Ann. Please, more substance, less sniping, fewer posts driven by pique. I have been reading your blog for eight years because I want to expose myself to views more conservative than my own but the shallowness and cheap shots really get to me. It's no wonder the country is in the state its in when a snotty little put down from Mike Royko thirty years ago is used to dismiss someone who is still around and is making things better for people. So, Jerry Brown was young as a first time governor and dated Linda Rondstadt. Neither one of those are bad things but I guess they are bad enough to negates the time he spent working with Mother Theresa,studying religion, being mayor of Oakland and making a big difference there, specifically deciding to live and work among people whose lives had a lot more challenges than his own as the son of a popular and highly successful governor (Pat Brown, who helped establish the higher education system in California which was among the best in the world until it was neglected by subsequent Republican governors.)If trolls spent less effort on snark and more effort on living lives with as much use and meaning as "Governor Moonbeam" they might be happier and we would all be better off.

Melissa said...Please, more substance, less sniping, fewer posts driven by pique. I have been reading your blog for eight years because I want to expose myself to views more conservative than my own but the shallowness and cheap shots really get to me.

By the way, Melissa, what you perceive as "shallowness and cheap shots" reflect frustration stimulated by years of trying to reason with people who think there is an upside to: unfettered immigration, profligacy giving rise to $20 trillion in debt, inadequate screening of Muslim refugees from terrorist-ridden nations, 90 million out of the workforce, restricting energy independence, nukes for Iran, lie-induced Obamacare, etc.

The crazy moonbeam sh*t comes from the population centers of SF Bay Area and LA basin/SD. That's where most of the people are so whatever they'll swallow they get to ram down everyone else's throat.

Virtually every problem Califonians face today can be traced back to Jerry Brown's first and second administrations in the 1970s - 80s. Our population was around 22 million and the motto was "if you don't build it, they won't come". So we stopped building roads because roads "cause" traffic. We didn't build dams because "if we have more water, people will use more water". We tabled, idled or decommissioned Hydroelectric projects(clean, renewable energy) because fish are more important than people. Jerry Brown lived like a Jesuit monk, sleeping on a mattress in a one bedroom apartment and thought everyone else should too.

The Energy deregulation fiasco of the 2000s was brought about by soley by California Democrats and in fact was the brain child of none other than Gray Davis, protege of...wait for it...Jerry Brown. At least he eventually took the fall for it. You can blame him for the Schwarzenegger terms. I know I do. Yes, Arnold was a complete failure, only because he failed to put a stop to the nonsense that Jerry Brown started in 1974 and continues today. A yuuge disappointment, as Trump is likely to be as our next president.

So we didn't built it and they came anyway. CA population today approx 40 million. We haven't built a freeway or a dam or a powerplant since the 70's. Education system is a shambles because the CA Teachers Assoc. owns the legislature. Our leaders tout a "balanced budget". Of course the unfunded pensions that taxpayers are on the hook for is "conservatively" estimated at $200B. Could be as high as HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS. PERS and CALSTRS are more concerned about divesting from Fossil Fuels, Guns or companies that do business in Israel than they are over their funds' rate of return. When there is no maoney to pay the retirees it's gonna get ugly. That's a WHEN, not an IF.

Leave? No. I choose to stay and fight. California's "flyover counties" are quite conservative - Placer County is one of the most conservative in the nation, believe it or not. There have been and are efforts to liberate the outerlands: 6 states initiative and currently "State of Jefferson" movement http://www.soj51.net/ . Mock if you must - help if you can. If anyone can get a message to Obi-Wan, tell him to send Lawyers, guns and money.

I used to pay attention to 'Broadway' but haven't for years; the only theater person I know of is that guy who plays the 'innocent' FBI agent on Graceland, or did (he wasn't very, by the end of the only season I saw). Watching the folks hand off the microphone, with varying degrees of grace, was amusing but as someone mentioned hours ago the song itself brought back awful memories of 70s television.

I was here during that energy crisis.It was the result of Grey Davis being an idiot. He had multiple chances of permitting forward contracts, which were desperately pursued by everyone including the Dem assembly during the mini crisis of the previous summer. These would have prevented the wild escalation. But he vetoed it.Even Enrons chairman pushed for forward contracts. Nope.Enron was far from the largest shark, these were BCHydro and LADWP.

Melissa, Gov. Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown in his first term signed the executive order permitting state employees to unionize and the rest is history. He did it for the same reason Jack Kennedy signed his executive order allowing federal employees union representation. Unions, in particular public employee unions, are Democratic constituencies. They contribute time, money and votes as long as you keep playing along and the Democrats in this state are quite happy to keep playing along. The public employee unions are the most powerful entities in California and the ordinary citizen pays a high price for that.

I can not believe you credit Brown with saving California's economy and "righting" the budget. We have over $86 billion in bond debt and in November will be asked to approve nine billion more. As a result, we have one of the lowest bond ratings in the country. Our unfunded liability for medical and dental benefits for current and retired state employees is $74 billion and climbing. The retirement plan for state employees is one of the most generous in the nation. One union has agreed to a very modest employee contribution to their retiree health benefits (one half of one percent of their salaries in the next two years rising to one percent after that), however, they got a five percent raise to offset those contributions. We have $77 billion in deferred road maintenance and Brown has said we most likely will require a new tax or fee. No doubt in the near future, we will be paying taxes on our mileage.

Jerry Brown did nothing for the city of Oakland. Nothing.

And this time around in a state whose most vital concern is water, or rather, its lack, Moonbeam instead has devoted his time and energy and billions of our dollars to an illusory pipedream because high speed train travel between LA and SF is the wave of the future.

So spare me any more lectures on all the good Jerry Brown has done for this state. We would have been far better off if he had pursued his early interest in the priesthood.